Essen

Essen tells the whole story of the Ruhr in one city: from the Krupp dynasty's cannon forges — the family villa Hügel, a 269-room industrialist's palace above the Baldeney lake, now hosts exhibitions and concerts — to the Zollverein colliery, the "most beautiful coal mine in the world", whose Bauhaus-inflected pithead architecture earned UNESCO listing and now houses museums, design schools and the Ruhr Museum inside the coal-washing plant. When Essen led the region as European Capital of Culture in 2010, the message was complete: the continent's mightiest industrial district had become its most surprising cultural one.

The transformation had deep roots. The Folkwang Museum, refounded here in the twenties, assembled one of Germany's great modern art collections — Gauguin to Kandinsky — under the credo that art belongs to the industrial city; the Folkwang University of the Arts trained, among others, Pina Bausch, and remains a powerhouse of dance, music and design. A millennium earlier, Essen's canonesses ruled a princely abbey whose cathedral treasury still guards the Golden Madonna — the oldest full sculpture of the Virgin in the Western world.

Music resides in style: the Aalto Theatre, Alvar Aalto's flowing white opera house, ranks among Europe's most beautiful modern stages, and the Philharmonie Essen beside it gives the Essen Philharmonic a hall of international standing. Coal made Essen rich; culture made it interesting.